Are Gandhian tools of civil resistance  relevant today?

The recent breakthrough that Anna Hazare had with the Indian Parliament through a persistent non-violent social pressure has brought  the issue of civil resistance, or  protest and corruption at the centre of national attention.  A large number of protesters, I feel,  were agitated more by the opposition to corruption than by support to the particular draft of the bill.  Not many people realized that converging so much of power in any one institution is fraught with enormous risk in a democratic society.  The heart of democratic society lies in checks and balances.  More on it later.   The instrument of civil resistance  was evolved into a sharp tool of political reforms by Gandhiji.  It has, however, evolved over a period of time in various ways.

Some of the disturbing trends are: [a] the struggle between means and ends has become blurred;  not once the leaders of recent social protest ask the participants to take an oath not to give bribe or even confess to their children the instances when they had paid bribes. The personal was divorced from professional   and social- a principle not consistent with Gandhian values. Though it may be a pragmatic response to viability of crowd management [b] the moral authority of the leader was accepted by most, but of those running the show was suspect,  [c] the decentralized urban protests in the national capital and that too in the central arena have become more important than numerous small, scattered and silent  struggles of rural and urban poor. The protest had to be loud to be heard, showing increasing insensitivity and inability of the state to register, and respond to feeble protests  ; [d] the legitimacy of the political class which had become indifferent to the norms of accountability and transparency  got diluted, and was enormously eroded, one of the most the viable and useful outcomes of the recent protest;  whether it will lead to churning in  various political parties and whether they will give tickets on different principles in future remains to be seen, less likely  [e] the demand for extra constitutional ways of reaching the end of social reforms has become louder.  While it is true that parliamentary practice has lost of genuine democratic discipline ( evident when huge budgetary demands are passed every year, no matter under which ruling party, in a few minutes without any critical discussion), reducing its place in polity is fraught with danger, and [f] the involvement of people in the movement whose personal commitment to honesty, respect for human rights of minorities and other disadvantaged people is not always clear confuse the masses about emerging role-models of anti-corruption agitation ( to call it a social movement yet may not be right).

It is obvious that in a mass movement, nobody can ensure that every participant will adhere to the rules of the game unambiguously.  When Gandhi withdrew his call for freedom struggle, when he found some of these rules being violated, he acquired tremendous moral authority.  It took many years and if we ask ourselves, Gandhian values of frugality, transparency, accountability, inclusiveness, moderation, aparigrah etc.,  did not survive in most of  public and private or even civil initiatives.  Authentic Social Movements cannot be built by media or through social networking sites alone.  The experience of Middle East and some other west Asian countries has been misread in this respect.  Spontaneous emergence of protests in different parts of the country was a positive sign and could be  a very useful foundation for developing self-design, or autopoesis  social mobilization leading to emergence of social movement against corruption, and discrimination and exclusion of the poor and other disadvantaged groups from the  main discourse.

I hope that young friends will debate these questions, trends and pointers more thoroughly and ask themselves, whether channelizing anger only against  government will help in the long run. , As a young friend commented on my post on facebook, should some anger be not pointed at ourselves and our own trade-off  in favour of short cuts in life, and thus creating a market for bribes in the society. Let us not lose sight of the roots of the problem which are in us,  not just there.

let me recall two  stories which I am sure many readers have already heard but it is worth recalling  them in the present context.  Once it is said that an old came to Gandhiji complaining about the fact that her young son consumed too much of jaggery. Gandhi ji asked her to come after a fortnight. When the old lady returned after that time, he kept his hand on the head of the boy and said, look friend, it is not good to consume too much jaggery.  Lady got furious. If you had to say only this, why did not you say this in the first place, why ask me to come twice. Gandhi ji smiled and said, ” look, mother, how could have I asked her to leave jaggery when I myself consumed it so much. I practiced abstinence for  a fortnight and then earned the right to tell your son to modify his behaviour”.  The lessons are obvious.

The second story is about a young man who was caught read handed after committing a major crime involving theft and murder. When he was give death sentence, he was asked his last wish. The thief requested a meeting  with his mother. The meeting was arranged and he asked his mother to come close. When she did, he bit her ear and shouted lordly that she was responsible for his present situation. If only she had rebuked and scolded him when he as a little child stole pencil and rubber in school, he would not have progressed this far on this path.

Let us ask ourselves, has the country come to such a pass only because our politicians are corrupt but we are honest;  the institutions betray the trust of the society but we keep the trust of our future generation (be it conservation of nature, upholding social values of fairness and justice in life)? Or we are all culprit and the change will have to begin from ourselves,  Lok pal will certainly  help ( if it is focused, agile,  and does not become a huge bureaucracy). But remember it attacks the problem after the fact. We have to work harder on making our institutions impermeable to corrupt influences if long term probity in private life has to be reinforced by probity  in public life.

Anil K Gupta